What Music Do You Meditate With?

[Druidus]

If you use it, that is... If you have some good ones that you can get for free online, post the link so we can enjoy it too! I tend to use "new-agey" music, but baroque music and repetitive music helps me sometimes as well. Good places to find those is amazon's music download page.

 

[Lightkeeper]

I recently bought two Bhuddist Monk CD's. One is Tibetan monks using their vocal chords to make several notes to say Om. The other is a variety chants by Monks. I love them, very powerful.

 

[jewscout]

Chris Cornell "Euphoria Morning"

 

[robtex]

For me no music. I don't practice mediation as just a meathod of relaxing but as a technical exericese to minimize sensory input and mind/body activity so music, which would add stimulus is counter productive to me.

The way it was presented to me in my studies (martial arts studies) is the act of mediation was to minimize body actions and mind thoughts to just breathing....so that you body is a state of alert rest.

When I was first learning I counted my breaths on each exhale as a technique to shut out random thought but than later graduated to a free flow mind where I didn't need to count my breaths and my mind would only have one thought per time in it.

There are outside noises in life...cars going by ..maybe a telephone ringing ..sometimes if in public place like a martial arts school people walking near the building and sometimes when I first started out I would hear all that consciouly aknowledging it but pretty soon I shut it out though I am sure I still hear it I just don't acknowledge it to myself.

The use of music would do two things that would be counter productive to me:

1) it would add an outside stimulous that would compete with my breath counts or free flow.
2) It would lead my thoughts in a non random fashion which would require a cognitive response of interpreation of lyerics or sounds which I would find interupptive to the cognative isolation I am working towards.

I realize though that those who use music are many times trying to induce an emotional state that is tangent to relaxation where I see it as a stoic endeavor used to achieve a cognative isolation from outside stimuli.

 

[Master Vigil]

It depends on the type of meditation I do. If I do zazen, no music. But if I do taoist meditation, singing bowls and chanting are awesome. Also, any kind of symphonic or movie scores that will help one pick up on the vibrations works well. The chi in one's self can be modified by the chi in music.

 

[cardero]

Genesis (older Genesis with Peter Gabriel), Tangerine Dream, There is this collection of electronic music that I have that simulates and stimulates thorugh Alpha, Delta, Theta, Theta and Alpha waves. Mostly I compose my own loops on the Ensoniq Keyboard.